Choose whether to use a passphrase

If your computer is shared with other people, as in a work laptop, you should choose and enter a real passphrase. Twice.

After key generation is complete, you'll have output that looks like this.

Expected result:

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa):
Created directory '/Users/student/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/student/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
88:54:ab:77:fe:5c:c3:7s:14:37:28:8c:1d:ef:2a:8d [email protected]

Verify

Your brand-new public key is now stored at ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Public vs. Private Keys

If you look inside ~/.ssh/, you will notice two files with the same name: id_rsa and id_rsa.pub.

id_rsa.pub is your public key and can be shared freely.

id_rsa is your private key and must be kept secret.

If someone else gets your private key and your passphrase, then they can pretend to be you and log on to your Heroku or Github accounts and cause mischief!

Add your generated key to the authentication agent using the following command: